


Being

by lazarov



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Psychological Trauma, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-20 16:51:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11339481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazarov/pseuds/lazarov
Summary: Being a person means a lot of things. Bucky is still figuring that out.





	1. No Matter What

1.

Steve says that being a person means that you have ownership over yourself. That you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. But Natalia tells him that that's all wrong: that he's a person no matter what - that he was one when he was an Asset and when he wasn't, too. That he was a person even when he was doing things he couldn't choose not to do, or when people were doing things to him he couldn't choose not to, either.

"But I could've," Bucky says suddenly, interrupting. She doesn’t seem to mind, just raises her eyebrows and nods, so he clears his throat and continues: "I think maybe I could’ve chosen not to do some of the things... but I did them anyway."

They’re in a coffee shop, just the two of them, because Natalia wants him to get out more and because Bucky doesn’t know how to say no to her. He hates it: there are too many people around, bumping into him with their giant shopping bags as they try to squeeze past their table to get to the register, and his hand tightens around his cardboard cup. It's bright red with pine trees circling the bottom and as he stares down at it, waiting for Natalia's response, it takes him a long time to dredge the word _Christmas_ up from his muddy brain. The shopping bags and the tiny, colourful lights lining the coffee shop windows and the ringing bells he can hear, over and over two blocks away, all suddenly make sense. His other hand - the wrong one - clenches into a fist, buried in the bottom of his jacket pocket.

"It’s not a fair choice if there’s punishment involved." Natalia shakes her head and smiles a little bit, just at the very corner of her mouth. It’s a kind smile, pitying - he suspects that she’s trying to be gentle with him. He hates it when people are gentle with him: it makes it so hard to figure out if they’re telling the truth. 

He shrugs at her and nods his head to make her feel like maybe she's right. He knows that she isn't, that it was his fault either way, but he doesn't want to hurt her feelings.


	2. Red/Green

2.

Near the end, there was a technician named Jude at the facility who was always kind to him.

One time, the best time, was after he came back from a cleaning mission in Yugoslavia. The primary target was male, two hundred and forty pounds, trained in hand-to-hand combat and firearms.  He went down after two shots to the chest: shattered spine, punctured lung.  The secondary target was easier: female, five-six and one-sixty.  She had a handgun and was quick and proficient with it, but she was a poor marksman under stress. When he ran straight for her, her hands shook so badly that she missed three times before he caught her ‘round the throat with his hand and crushed her windpipe. He pressed the muzzle of his handgun against her sternum and pulled the trigger twice and then she went quiet.  

They hadn't briefed him on the third one standing in the doorway, bottom lip trembling: blonde hair, pink dress.  Tall as his hip and tiny-voiced.

Jude always brought him things, afterwards, when he had to clean children.  Small things, easily hidden things that would always go missing days later when he'd sneak a hand under his mattress to feel for them in the dark: a small, floral cloth-covered button, a page torn from a picture book, a bottle cap. Tiny gifts just for him.

After the mission in Yugoslavia, Jude brought him two gummy bears, which he produced from deep in the pocket of his white coat like a magician. A green one and a red one. They stared up at him from the palm of Jude’s hand with their stupid, squished little faces and he knew he could never bring himself to eat them. They lived under his bed for four days, until they turned up during a cell check and the man with the angry face whose name he didn’t know handcuffed him to the wall and used the cattle prod on him.

Green was green and Red was red and they were his secret friends for four days.

They were also contraband, and that’s why he was punished: no stored food allowed in cells at any time, food meant vermin, broken rules meant he got the prod. A logical progression, A to B to C. The cattle prod left burns on his inner thighs that chafed against his tactical gear when he walked. With every step, he thought of squished gummy faces and Jude’s long fingers gently brushing the edge of his jaw.

He tried to tell Steve about Jude, once, but Steve got a strange look on his face and gripped the edge of the table until it started to creak and told him, "That man wasn’t your friend, Buck," and he knew that he couldn't tell Steve about Jude anymore.

He wouldn’t understand.

 


	3. No Thanks

3.

Six months after Steve and Sam found him, there are things he’s already begun to take for granted.

At first, he’d spend an afternoon throwing open all of the cupboards in his kitchenette and hopping up to sit on the granite island and take in the contents. Beautiful straight lines of shiny tin cans and colourful boxes of cereal. Giant bags of rice and dried beans, like nothing he’d ever possessed before. Now, he catches himself eating mindlessly: grazing on handfuls of saltine crackers or stacks of oatmeal-raisin cookies without thinking twice about whether he’s actually hungry or not. Six months of freedom and he’s nearly forgotten what real hunger feels like. It's supposed to be a good thing, but secretly it scares him to forget.

There’s a little screen on his refrigerator that the disembodied voice that lives in his ceiling taught him how to use. Just by tapping on pictures of food with his finger, he can get anything delivered to his front door as if by magic. The voice announces its arrival (“Your grocery delivery has arrived, Mr. Barnes.”) - he hates being called Mr., but Steve told him it’s just the way it’s programmed. Bucky understands what it’s like to be programmed, and so he doesn’t bring it up again.

“We can get you some fresh veggies, Buck,” Steve says, now, shaking his head as he helps him put away his grocery order. Three brown paper bags, heavy with non-perishables and a few extra treats that he took weeks to begin to allow himself: a block of cheddar cheese and a carton of apple juice.

“No thanks,” Bucky says. Canned is better, canned is familiar.

He wishes Steve would stop smiling at him like that every time he says _no thanks_ , like he’s the proud owner of a stupid dog who’s finally performed a simple trick after months of positive reinforcement. _No thanks_ used to be so difficult - impossible, even: food had to be immediately accepted and scarfed down, even if his stomach was already painfully full. Outings to too-crowded places with too few exits agreed to, even though he had to whisper commands to himself to keep from bolting. Every touch accepted whether it made his skin crawl or his throat go tight. 

“What did they feed you in there?” Steve asks slowly, rolling a can of mushrooms between his palms.

It takes Bucky a while to find the right descriptor. “Protein,” he says with a shrug. “Liquified, one litre three times per day. Some mish-mash of nutrients invented by the scientists.” He thinks harder, smacks his lips together to try and bring back the memory of viscous fluid on his tongue. Half a year since he’s had a full system wipe, half a year of living in his own head uninterrupted, and his memory of back then is already beginning to fail him. “Didn’t taste bad,” he adds. “Didn’t really taste like anything.”

It’s not a good enough answer because Steve frowns. Bucky doesn’t understand why.

“It was fine,” he continues, balling up an empty grocery bag. It makes a satisfying, distracting crunch between his hands. “I never went hungry unless I was being punished.”

It’s supposed to be an explanation. He wants it to be comforting for Steve to know that he was never hungry unless it was his own fault. But Steve doesn’t say anything, he just puts the can of mushrooms down on the counter, closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the cupboard door. Steve breathes out deep and the muscles in his shoulders tense up and then relax.

“Remember how we used to be so hungry all the time?” Bucky asks. He looks away from the confusing expression on Steve’s face and places the apple juice in the door of the fridge and block of cheese on the top rack, where it sits alone like a prize. Clearing his throat so he can speak louder he adds, “Back when we were kids?”

More than anything, he wants to make Steve stop pitying him by reminding him that he remembers things now. Only some things, and only in flashes - disjointed images that don’t mean much on their own but that form a picture when you push them all together into a collage: Steve’s skinny arms swallowed up by his too-big pushed up sleeves, the way the bones jutted sharply out at the elbows like knobs on a branch. Gleefully producing the pennies they’d found dropped in the gutters while walking home from school and racing each other to the corner store to buy wax bottles and rainbow-coloured taffies. His memories are ratty and full of holes, but they're his.

“Yeah, buddy,” Steve says. He opens his eyes and pulls his head back from the door so he can tuck the can of mushrooms neatly inside, next to Bucky’s stockpile of stewed tomatoes and baby corn. “I remember.”

“Me too,” Bucky says firmly. He needs to make sure Steve knows it.


	4. Secrets

4.

Underneath his bed, he keeps a shoebox full of small treasures - brightly-wrapped chocolate bars, crinkly bags full of pink liquorice, foil packets of crackers and his favourite: sesame snaps. It doesn’t matter that he’s given a weekly allowance to buy whatever he likes, more money in his pockets every day than he’s ever seen before. He could go to the corner store at any moment to buy every last piece of snack food off of every last shelf. 

The real satisfaction comes from sliding the cardboard box from under his bed and lifting the lid off with both hands before running his fingers across their multicoloured labels. It comes from knowing that nobody knows about his bounty and that nobody can take it away from him.


End file.
